If you liked Arafat, you’ll love Campa-Najjar

Ammar Campa-Najjar

On Thursday we met Ammar Campa-Najjar, a former staffer in the Obama White House who, in 2016, wrote a sappy Washington Post op-ed in which he professed his adoration for America – despite what he presented as the American military’s brutal mistreatment of his family in the Middle East. In his op-ed, he noted that his father had been a colleague of Yasser Arafat’s in the Palestinian government. He also mentioned his grandfather, whom he presented in sentimental fashion as having been “gunned down” in full view of his son, Campa-Najjar’s father, when the son was only 11 years old. Significantly, however, Campa-Najjar did not mention his grandfather’s name or describe the circumstances under which he was “gunned down.”

Grandpa

Campa-Najjar is now running for Congress from a southern California district. After he announced his candidacy, enterprising reporters dug up some of the details of his family background that didn’t make it into his Post op-ed. As it happens, Campa-Najjar’s paternal grandfather was none other than Muhammed Youssef al-Najjar (aka Abu Youssef), the head of the Palestinian terrorist group Black September, which kidnapped, tortured, and murdered eleven Israelis and one West German at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

In addition to this, Yousef was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. He was a founder of Fatah (of which Black September was a covert subsidiary) and a leader of its military arm, Al-‘Asifah. He sat on the executive committee of the PLO and belonged to the Palestinian National Congress.

A Black September terrorist during the Munich Olympics massacre

Of course, Campa-Najjar has known all his life who his grandfather was. He chose to keep it a secret, even as he tried to use his grandfather’s killing to win sympathy for himself. And what did he do when the news about his grandfather’s identity became public? He issued a perfectly bizarre statement. “For the sake of the victims,” he said, “I hoped this tragedy wouldn’t be politicized.” What? The Munich massacre wasn’t a “tragedy.” It was an atrocity – a jihadist atrocity committed in the name of a religion whose Holy Book teaches the hatred of Jews. How, moreover, does revealing the hidden truth about Campa-Najjar’s family history amount to “politiciz[ation]”?

Campa-Najjar went on: “But if these old wounds must be re-opened, then I pray God gives purpose to their unspeakable pain. I pray that purpose is to see peace prioritized by my generation of Palestinians, Israelis and the whole of humanity.” More empty words. Note that Campa-Najjar didn’t express so much as a hint of regret for the coldblooded murders his grandfather committed.

Good ole dad

And what about Campa-Nijjar’s dad, who, as Campa-Nijjar had already admitted in his 2016 op-ed, was a colleague of Arafat’s? What was his full story? That came out, too. In 2013, it turned out, Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) had issued a report about Western funding of PLO schools where children are taught Jew-hatred. A PLO ambassador publicly rejected PMW’s findings. And that ambassador was, yes, Campa-Najjar’s father, Yasser Najjar. Another fact about al-Najjar emerged, too: after his terrorist father was killed, he was adopted by the none other than the king of Morocco – a little detail that puts a dent in Campa-Nijjar’s cozy attempt in the Post to depict his dad as having climbed up out of childhood poverty and oppression to “pursue his dreams” in America.

Well, now the truth has come out. But mainstream media, for the most part, have refused to write about it. Either that, or they’ve asserted that the activities of Campa-Najjar’s father and grandfather have nothing to do with him. But of course they do. Only two years ago, in the Post, he was referring to them with obvious pride. Now he’s trying to distance himself from them. But the key fact here is that he hid the full truth about these men for decades. Like Tariq Ramadan, another slick character who pretends to stand for Western values but who is in fact the grandson of an Islamic terrorist, Campa-Najjar is obviously not to be trusted.